he
was desirous, not of hearing Gorgias display his rhetoric, but of
interrogating him concerning the nature of his art. Callicles proposes
that they shall go with him to his own house, where Gorgias is staying.
There they find the great rhetorician and his younger friend and
disciple Polus.

SOCRATES: Put the question to him, Chaerephon.

CHAEREPHON: What question?

SOCRATES: Who is he?--such a question as would elicit from a man the
answer, 'I am a cobbler.'

Polus suggests that Gorgias may be tired, and desires to answer for him.
'Who is Gorgias?' asks Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his master
Socrates. 'One of the best of men, and a proficient in the best and
noblest of experimental arts,' etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical
and balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and
unmeaningness of the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that
he has mistaken the quality for the nature of the art, and remarks to
Gorgias, that Polus has learnt how to make a speech, but not how to
answer a question. He wishes that Gorgias would answer him. Gorgias is
willing enough, and replies to the question asked by Chaerephon,--that
he is a rhetorician, and in Homeric language, 'boasts himself to be a
good one.' At the request of Socrates he promises to be brief; for 'he
can be as long as he pleases, and as short as he pleases.' Socrates
would have him bestow his length on others, and proceeds to ask him
a number of questions, which are answered by him to his own great
satisfaction, and with a brevity which excites the admiration of
Socrates. The result of the discussion may be summed up as follows:--

Rhetoric treats of discourse; but music and medicine, and other
particular arts, are also concerned with discourse; in what way then
does rhetoric differ from them? Gorgias draws a distinction between the
arts which deal with words, and the arts which have to do with external
actions. Socrates extends this distinction further, and divides all
productive arts into two classes: (1) arts which may be carried on in
silence; and (2) arts which have to do with words, or in which words
are coextensive with action, such as arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric.
But still Gorgias could hardly have meant to say that arithmetic was the
same as rhetoric. Even in the arts which are concerned with words there
are differences. What then distinguishes rhetoric from the other arts
which have to do with words? 'The words which rhetor